Some questions for new users

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Ah, thank you for bringing this up - my next question was going to be for glossary suggestions.

I have "metadata", "DRM", and "tweaks" - any other words I should be sure to define?

(I really can't thank you all enough - this is being such a great help to me!)

Believe it or not: Sort and sorting.
Many folk do not know the different data type sorting rules for Alpha-Numeric, Numeric, Date, T/F/U (logical)

[BeccaPrice]

ok, I'm not sure I know those rules myself, at least not to write them down. Is there a reference somewhere that I can get them?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

ok, I'm not sure I know those rules myself, at least not to write them down. Is there a reference somewhere that I can get them?

I don't think I could write a clear document on that either

Alpha sort treats everything as Letters (ASCII weight)
'1' is the Letter One and sorts before 'A"
If you want to sort more than a single digit in numeric order, it must be padded (0 is more obvious and reliable than space) to the same number of positions or you get: 1, 10, 2, 20, 200, 3 ... 001, 002, 003, 010, 020, 200 ...

Numbers can have a sign (not sure if Calibre allows negative numbers in the DB)

Dates in Calibre are CE after the year 100 (there was a thread on BC or alternate realities dating )


And the most common issue, people trying to obtain a sort on 2 conflicting fields . Series(_index), Title, or Author
You can't have a book in Series index order And Title order (Unless it is Grafton's: Alphabet Murders )

[BeccaPrice]

Where do special characters come in? for example, I've got "-And he built a crooked house" that sorts first, because of the -.

it's not classic ASCII sorting, because lower case and upper case letters are treated the same.

also, my dates are European style (dd/mm/yyyy) - is there a tweak to put them American style (mm/dd/yyyy)?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Where do special characters come in? for example, I've got "-And he built a crooked house" that sorts first, because of the -.

it's not classic ASCII sorting, because lower case and upper case letters are treated the same.

also, my dates are European style (dd/mm/yyyy) - is there a tweak to put them American style (mm/dd/yyyy)?

Classic ASCII sorting is punctuation (some of the characters over the Number keys))0-9A-Z(the punctuation on the main keyboard) then a-z (shifted punctuation on the main keyboard) : ASCII32 (space) to ASCII126 (tilde)

There are International ASCII sorts that map Upper and Lower together)

Calibre Date-Time is numeric underneath so display format does not matter (This is NOT for a Text field that has numbers and slashes. ASCII dates should always be entered YYYY/MM/DD Month a day must have leading 0's below 10. the seerator does not matter as long as it is consistent over all records)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Where do special characters come in? for example, I've got "-And he built a crooked house" that sorts first, because of the -.

it's not classic ASCII sorting, because lower case and upper case letters are treated the same.

also, my dates are European style (dd/mm/yyyy) - is there a tweak to put them American style (mm/dd/yyyy)?

Abandon hope all ye who enter here...

The problem is that people want the data to sort in the order that they know is correct, where "correct" depends on what the data represents. This is a perfectly reasonable point of view, but one that drives developers batty. For example, consider the three following strings that happen to be addresses:

28 Aardvark Lane
1 Zebra's Run
33 Mystreet

Most people (but not all) would want these sorted by house number within street name, as in

28 Aardvark Lane
33 Mystreet
1 Zebra's Run

To make things more interesting, the postal delivery person would want them sorted by the distance between them. Unfortunately, the computer does not know these are addresses and in general doesn't know an address from a hole in the wall, so the computer does neither. Instead it sorts them in the order indicated by the characters.

1 Zebra's Run
28 Aardvark Lane
33 Mystreet

which annoys almost everyone.

The most common case arises when the user considers the items to be numbers but computer thinks that the items are text (like dictionary entries). Consider the values

2
1
19

In dictionary order, you get

1
19
2

but in numeric order you get

1
2
19

When considering "the order indicated by the characters", don't forget the "national language rules" that specify the correct order of letters. For example, the letter "ä" sorts near the letter "a" in German but after the letter "z" in Swedish. In addition, we run into "Natural Order" (sometimes called "dictionary order"), which amongst other things combines lower- and upper-case together instead of putting "a" after "Z" (or vice versa).

In the end, the person must tell the computer (somehow) what the data represents. The common cases are numbers, text, dates, and currencies. Calibre supports the first 3. It uses the International Components for Unicode (ICU) for text, which ignores case when comparing. In addition, calibre uses some special rules for what to do with "no value given". A less common case supported by calibre is Yes/No (Boolean) values.

Dates add their own complexity. They are a bit like addresses in that the components of a date have specific meanings. Unfortunately (again), it isn't usually obvious which component is what part of the date. Consider the date 10/12/2005. In the US, this is October 12, 2005. In Europe (or at least with the places I am familiar with) this is 10 December 2005. Clearly they must sort differently, but how does calibre know what to do? Calibre uses the current "locale" to guess at the order of fields by converting a date like "4 May 2006" to a slash-separated form, such as 4/5/2006. The underlying converter looks at the settings in the computer for dates and builds the "right" result, which tells calibre where the month, day, and year parts are in a normal date.

You might enjoy reading http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...ort-order.html, and especially the comments.

In general, special characters appear in sorted order where they appear in the older ASCII tables, but this is not always true. The order can be changed by the "code page" that the computer has been told to use or by the "standard order" for that language that in calibre is specified by the ICU package.

As for your last question: there are date format tweaks (Control how dates are displayed) that can be used to put the components of a date where you want them. Every custom date column has its own format.

[Joanna]

Some of the problems I struggled with in the very beginning:
- series numbering (how to switch from Roman to Arabic numerals - easy as such but it wasn't easy to find this option),
- lots and lots of tags which didn't even make sense (solution: customizing metadata download),
- tag browser view: switching to sorting by popularity / average rating without realizing it (but it has changed in the last Calibre release and probably will be less of a problem),
- collapsing/partitioning of tag browser categories (especially in my beautiful genre custom column with hierarchical items ) - again, very easy to switch off but one has to know where to do that (and what's happening)
- adding additional files/formats (just drag&drop but you have to know where to drop )

Plus, just like Kiwidude I turned one mess into another, trying to import all books to Calibre ASAP and clear up data later - not a good method, especially for beginning users of Calibre - the mess in the beginning is so overhelming you may give up before you actually start enjoying it.

Some discoveries I was very glad about (they weren't problems as such but improved my work with Calibre immensely):
- how to easily show/hide columns in the view,
- how to bulk modify a tag without using the search&replace option (by simple renaming it in the Tag Browser),
- custom columns!!! + column colouring + plugins
When I discovered that (fortunately, pretty quickly) I was in my own OCD, "let's play with all these columns and create the perfect book catalog system I've never had" paradise.

My discovery of this week (still don't know what to do about it ):
- there is a quickview option!

The biggest problem of beginning users of Calibre of all times is probably:
- how to change folder structure in Calibre (the answer is: you can't and you shouldn't try),

Plugins that I find particularly useful (but this is a very individual thing, depending on one's needs, and this keeps changing in my case):
- Extract ISBN
- Reading List
I use many others, too (Generate cover, Open with, Count pages, Modify Epub, Quality Check) but these two are absolutely indispensable.


Other than that, I agree with theducks: as a beginning user of Calibre (but even now!) I would love to read some kind of a guide about different types of libraries (including concrete solutions), as well as ideas for custom columns, column coloring, adding various data. I actually think it is the one issue that the Calibre manual does not cover, at least not from the point of view I would be interested in.

It could be descriptions of:
- library structures for some common and uncommon library tipes (fiction, textbooks, books for research, articles, magazines, audiobooks) - people use Calibre for all kinds of stuff,
- how to deal with various kinds of data (e.g. how people mark read/no read, genre, edition, other contributors in anthologies, file quality, translations of the same book etc. - one kind of data can be dealt with very differently by various Calibre users; it's not like one method is better than the other and it is generally good to know other people's methods)
- what one can do with tag column, yes/no columns, column coloring etc. - inspirations are always good .

Good luck with your work!

[BeccaPrice]

All of this is fascinating, but what I really need is a list or chart that says "this is what the sort order is (special characters - be specific) (numbers)(letters alpha regardless of case)"

I've got the last two, but I can't find the first requirement.

When I get this thing done, I'll post the url to the webhelp files.

[unboggling]

I noticed most of the responses here aren't from new users as the OP asked. So I'll contribute my own 2 cents. Last year I wrote "Methods and Examples for New calibre Users", which you're welcome to borrow ideas from, with the caveat that some of it may be obsolete by now due to changes in calibre and in my workflow. Here's the link: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...09#post1796609

That shows what I thought was important to new users to know, at that time. In retrospect, it was probably too technical for many new users because I had a technical background, though I was relatively new to eBooks and calibre. During that project I struggled with questions posed in my own mind as well as questions asked by other more experienced folks here:

How new is the new-user audience? Brand-new? Or at my own level of relatively-new-user knowledge and capability with eBooks and calibre? Are their requirements for eBooks and calibre the same as mine? What area is the "new user" new at? There are different kinds of new users, for computers, for mobile devices, for eBooks, for calibre in general. Then there are different kinds of new things in mobile devices and readers, eBooks, and calibre at different levels of expertise. "How new is new", and "what is new to who" are not trivial questions. And the biggest questions in my mind were: Why am I writing this whatever-it-is: list of tips, list of issues and solutions, web help file, etc. Is it for that audience (whoever/whatever) or for me?

Ultimately I realized I was really writing it to help me focus and think about what I was doing with eBooks and calibre, rethink why I was doing things the way I was doing them, and motivate myself to learn enough more that I could change my workflow with eBooks and calibre to better meet my needs. By the time I realized all of that, I'd mostly already accomplished those goals in a sort of ongoing way. So I decided to let that thread die the death of the ignored old thread.

My advice to you is, to avoid your brain exploding into pieces of frustrated and overwhelmed gore, focus on a small subject, a small experience-level of newness, and a small area of using calibre, and focus on audience of users at or below your own level of understanding, on only one issue you thought was important to resolve when you were learning that area of calibre. Narrow the scope as much as possible.

Otherwise the list of issues, tips, solutions will just keep expanding.

Examples:

Scope too broad and probably too technical (IMO): general computer knowledge of how ASCII or Date sorts work. Scope maybe specific enough: how to sort stuff by clicking on column headings, and how to (maybe) set tweaks that affect sorts. Not technically how ASCII sorts work.

Usefully specific scope: How to download news using one of calibre's pre-existing recipes. It's easy, it takes only a few clicks to do, but that alone may require two pages of explanations and instructions that consist mostly of simple explanations: What a news download is. Why it might be convenient to use it. That some calibre users automatically download news overnight, auto-send it to reader, then they read the news on their train or bus commute to work. But ignore the subject of actually writing a new recipe.

Other usefully specific scopes: Any one of the bullets in kiwidude's list or specific areas mentioned by anyone else in this thread. Where they're not too technical. Not all of those issues, scope would be too broad. Just one.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

All of this is fascinating, but what I really need is a list or chart that says "this is what the sort order is (special characters - be specific) (numbers)(letters alpha regardless of case)"

I've got the last two, but I can't find the first requirement.

When I get this thing done, I'll post the url to the webhelp files.

The answer is language (locale) dependent. One must look at the ISO definitions and the ICU tables. For example, in some cases the letters áéíóú and àèìòù are considered special, where in others such as French they are considered letters. In French the quote marks are « and » where in English the character is ", and they sort differently.

The technical term for sort ordering is "collation". As I said, calibre uses the ICU libraries to do sorting. The collation tables for ICU can be found at http://www.collation-charts.org/icu442/. The English collation chart is at http://www.collation-charts.org/icu442/icu442-en.html. I can't guarantee they are correct, but they look right.

[BeccaPrice]

Thanks, chaley - looking at the charts, I think talking too much about sort order is getting into way too much detail for my purposes. It's so easy for me to get enamored of the little details like that. I don't think most people will worry about special character sorting order anyway. Still, this is being a fascinating tangent, and I'm learning a lot!

[unboggling]

BTW, the calibre blog is a good resource for specific-narrow-scope examples of web-based help for new calibre users. I really like the use of screen shots there.

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by chaley

The answer is language (locale) dependent. One must look at the ISO definitions and the ICU tables. For example, in some cases the letters áéíóú and àèìòù are considered special, where in others such as French they are considered letters. In French the quote marks are « and » where in English the character is ", and they sort differently.

The technical term for sort ordering is "collation". As I said, calibre uses the ICU libraries to do sorting. The collation tables for ICU can be found at http://www.collation-charts.org/icu442/. The English collation chart is at http://www.collation-charts.org/icu442/icu442-en.html. I can't guarantee they are correct, but they look right.

@chaley, thanks -- I've linked and made bookmarks for that technical info to consider the next time I'm pulling out my hair in bafflement at technical sort order issues. Great info. I just wouldn't like trying to explain it to a "new" user.

[Bookatarian]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Bookatarian - a good list

It was in hindsight just a dumb thing to do. Trying to stick so many unorganised and duplicated ebooks from a range of sources into calibre up front is just asking for trouble, and I got it .

Yet this is the way I would think most new users first start using Calibre. They simply import everything in at one time. Your very elegant solutions for fixing things up would be beyond quite a few new users or just basic out-of-the box type users. So maybe a very basic section on the best way to go about merging existing eBook collections in Calibre could be considered for inclusion?

Glossary inclusions: tags, identifiers, format types, recipe, plugin

The term "recipe" really through me for a minute, though now I use them, I was a little overwhelmed the first time I ventured into that section of Calibre.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by unboggling

BTW, the calibre blog is a good resource for specific-narrow-scope examples of web-based help for new calibre users. I really like the use of screen shots there.

If you mean the tips and tricks blog, that's more of a blog than a help file - but it is a goldmine of good information, and I intend to link to it as a resource.

When I get my help file done in alpha draft, I'll post the link to it and you can see what I mean.

Booktarian, I'm not even touching on recipes - I'm still not brave enough to play with them myself. My husband wants me to set up a recipe for his kindle, and so eventually I'm going to have to learn them, though. Thanks for the glossary items - I'll definitely add them.

(what's the difference between a tag and an identifier? that last isn't a term I'm familiar with.)